A Pig at the Left Hand of God
by Mahogany Monk
Summary: Louise's summoning is intended to give her a protector, a shield. Ryoga is used to blocking hits, and absorbing damage - seems like a match made in heaven. But if Ryoga's involved then Ranma's around, and where Ranma goes the madness of Nerima will surely follow...
1. Chapter 1

AN: This started off being a Ryoga only story, but as I wrote it I figured, hey why don't we just throw everyone in. Might take some time to get there, and most of it's still going to be Ryoga. Oh, and please be aware that I haven't read/seen Familiar of Zero, so I am kinda running off fan works and what little I can find on the net.

If I haven't scared you off yet, then here you go...

* * *

**_Ryoga. Lost._**

_It was all Ranma's fault_, mused Ryoga Hibiki as a multicoloured vortex swirled around him, confusing his already challenged sense of direction even further. It had to be, every other thing to shatter his existence was caused by the infuriating martial artist, so this was probably the product of one of his schemes which had backfired. Again. _Still_, thought Ryoga, _better get ready, I think the ground is coming at me_.

He hit the ground at speed, causing more damage to it than to him, and was briefly the centre of a far larger explosion than he was expecting. Still, the lost boy had grown used to heavy impacts over the years, and pain was an old friend by now, easily ignored when needed. The heavy-set boy pushed himself to his feet and shook himself briefly before taking stock of himself. There were no broken bones, and no more pain than might be expected from the long fall. His ki seemed normal enough, settling down from the spar he'd been having with his rival. The dust was still clearing from the explosion, giving him a few seconds more to check over his clothing and equipment.

He was wearing his sparring clothes, durable dark grey trousers and his hard-wearing yellow shirt, both of which seemed intact. His bandanna was still in place, infused with a low level of ki to give him some protection around his skull – it never hurt to be careful after all. Unfortunately he'd gone past the initial stage of his spar with Ranma, and thus had lost his trusty weighted umbrella when the speedy martial artist got him into a joint lock. Not only that, but if he'd been yanked away from Tokyo then he would have lost his rucksack, along with all his stuff. Ryoga's mouth twisted into a grimace, his elongated incisors slipping over his bottom lip as annoyance flickered over his features.

The smoke and dust was clear enough to glance around the field he had just been unceremoniously thrown into, and he quickly surveyed the area. No Ranma, but enough people surrounded him to put him on edge, and his instincts pushed him into a defensive stance. He raised his arms in front of his chest and planted his legs firmly, waiting for the first strike to hit. A few moments passed without an attack, and Ryoga allowed himself to relax out of his instinctive fight or flight posture, assessing the people around him for threats. The crowd of people seemed stunned, though most were staring at the pink-haired midget in front of him than actually at the man who fell from the sky. The silence dragged on, and Ryoga began to feel more than a little self-conscious, standing there like he was seconds from death.

Suddenly, the silence was broken with a sharp bark of laughter from his left. A red-headed girl pushed her way to the front of the circle of people and began to shout at the midget in what appeared, to Ryoga's honed ear for languages, to be a thoroughly odd version of Belgian. Ryoga's eyebrows shot up his forehead as he considered what this meant. _But how did I get to Africa from Japan so quickly?_ He shook the thought out of his head, concentrating on what the loud girl was shouting.

"Hah, you so fail at light, Nothing!" The pink haired girl seemed to take offence at this, returning fire with a shriek of her own.

"Shut out! It worked, chest, I bring mighty... er..." Ryoga cocked his head at the small girl, waiting for her to continue. It had taken him some time, but he'd finally learned that when two girls were arguing, the best response was to be as quiet as possible, and hope that no-one noticed him. It was a lesson that Ranma was yet to learn, to Ryoga's eternal happiness. Unfortunately, it appeared that his hope was going to be unanswered, as both girls had bothered to look at him, and it seemed his appearance had stumped both of them, as they were both simply staring at him in shock with open mouths.

The group was coming out of their stupor, conversations cutting across each other far faster than Ryoga could translate the language. Then a third voice cut across the verbal meleè, silencing it all with a clear tone.

"First, an odd occurrence. You bring boy, Louise." Ryoga's eyes snapped to the source of the voice, finding a genial looking man leaning on a staff. He looked to be around thirty, leaning towards fat, and wearing flowing red robes that stopped just above the floor. The people around Ryoga stopped talking as he spoke, and the situation suddenly seemed oddly familiar to Ryoga. This was, in some weird way, a classroom. And this man was the teacher. Ryoga's evaluation of the man was quick from long practice, and as the man continued Ryoga kept listening.

"Odd yes. But you end bring now." The pink haired midget's eyes seemed to almost pop out of her head at that, and she was winding herself up for another blast of noise when Ryoga decided to speak up, mentally translating his words into the little Belgian he knew.

"Excuse," he said warily, eyeing the crowd around him. "Where this?" Unfortunately, the pink haired girl spoke too, and at a much higher volume than Ryoga.

"What!? You not right, Coleman!" Ryoga's words were ignored under the short girls shout, and the crowd started to chatter excitedly, causing Ryoga to miss the response from the teacher. He shook his head and stepped towards the closest edge of the circle, intent on ignoring the crowd and making it to the nearest shore. From what he remembered of geography, Russia was a short boat trip from Africa, and a small detour through Australia should get him back to Tokyo in no time at all. Then he could punish Ranma for teleporting him round the world, and meet up with Akari for their next date. Unluckily for Ryoga, this step brought him closer to the pink haired girl, and his lack of attention meant that he missed her defeated expression. She stepped into his way, and he stopped short of walking through her as she started speaking again. Ryoga's brow furrowed as she finished speaking, as he hadn't been able to make heads or tails of the words she'd said, and his attempt to unravel this mystery gave her time to stand on tiptoe and plant a kiss on his cheek.

The suddenness shocked the lost boy, and he stumbled back a step, eyeing the girl with no small trepidation. He'd followed Ranma through China – he knew what cheek kisses meant to Amazons, and didn't really want to know what they might mean to Belgian schoolchildren. He lifted a hand to his cheek, and staggered slightly as he felt his ki shift within him, flowing from his cheek to the back of his left hand. He looked at his hand in alarm before his ki shrieked in agony and he collapsed to the ground. He'd thought he knew pain, but this feeling was beyond anything he'd ever felt before.

His ki was being torn out of it's normal path and his aura leaked to the surface, sliding along a new pathway being torn through the air. The crowd around them had gone silent again, watching as the pain finally overcame him and he screamed in torment as the dark green of his battle aura snapped into a line between him and the girl who had kissed him. Through the pain Ryoga caught a glimpse of his left hand, and saw arcane runes etching themselves into the back of his hand, searing heavy black characters into his hand as a presence seemed to settle into the back of his mind. With a sense of finality Ryoga watched the last rune finish through eyes made hazy by pain, and his ki snapped back to something approaching normality, though the sense of something inside his head remained. With a shuddering sigh he surrendered to the swirling in his head, unable to keep his mind active, and passed out.

* * *

_**Half an hour ago, Nerima...**_

Nabiki watched the two super-powered brawlers knock each other around with a sense of absolute boredom. It wasn't even worth running bets on the fights these days, Ranma and Ryoga had been sparring on and off since the failed wedding a few months ago and neither was taking it seriously. It had been weeks since either of them had used their main ki attacks on the other without a clear wind-up, and even then they hadn't come close to a full power strike. Still, she had to admit the sheer speed, strength and skill the two displayed was so far above the rest of the martial artists in Nerima that the other fighters were worth even less of her time than this. The fight was starting to come to a close now, both fighters coming down from their overpowered strikes and seeming to move back to normality from the insanity they pulled off in combat.

As the pair slowed to a point where they no longer blurred with their movement, Nabiki looked them over more closely. Ryoga was wearing his normal clothes, his oddly fang-shaped teeth showing over his bottom lip as he grinned with pleasure at the spar. She paid little attention to the eternally lost boy, he wasn't bright enough to interest her, and was never around for long enough to be exploited by her, and therefore she felt no need to know more about him. The other in the ring, however, she watched much more closely. Ranma Saotome, her younger sisters fiancé, was dressed in his customary clothes, his red silk shirt over black trousers flapping in the breeze created through his movements. He was still in his male aspect, having not run into cold water today, and his black pig-tail followed the movement of his head as he dodged around a fast combination of punches aimed for his head. The clothes hid the edges of his form as he flowed through his dodges and counter-attacked, but the movements shone through, his body fitting into each block and strike as if he had done each one a million times before. Then again, Nabiki considered, the amount of practice that Ranma went through may have meant that he actually had gone through them that many times. Still, it was nothing she hadn't seen before, and she prepared to leave the crowd that surrounded the duelling martial artists.

That was when something different happened, drawing Nabiki's eyes back towards the duo even as she picked herself up to leave. A green oval expanded out of a point of nothingness on one side of the combatants, and swept itself towards Ryoga's exposed back. Ryoga had no time to react, however Ranma saw it form, reacting with his trademark speed, and incidentally confirming Nabiki's suspicions about the supposed enmity between the two. The pig-tailed martial artist blurred up to Ryoga, attempting to throw him out of the path of the now man-sized ellipse that hurtled towards them. But Ryoga, assuming they were still sparring, held himself still, rooting his feet to the floor. Then, just as Ryoga caught the expression on his opponents face and understood that he was looking at something behind him, the oval was upon them. A bright flash of light lit out, and Nabiki covered her eyes as the flash briefly blinded her. When she moved her hand down, the makeshift sparring ring was empty. Both Ryoga and Ranma were gone.

Nabiki stared at the empty space for a span of minutes, along with everyone in the crowd. Rumour was that Ranma had an invisibility technique, after all, and Ryoga could well have copied it. Still, Ryoga was hardly one to stay invisible for long – subtlety had never been Ryoga's chosen path after all. As the minutes stretched Nabiki began to consider that neither boy was there any more, and quickly made her way to the edge of the crowd in order to get back to the Tendo dojo. After all, if whatever this new trouble was had got Ranma, then the dojo would be where he would go to lick his wounds. And even without that knowledge, there was still the fact that anything that hit Ranma inevitably bled over to her family. Still, she hoped the coarse martial artist wasn't dead. He brought in far too much money to go out like that.

* * *

_**Ranma, Very Lost.  
**_

A figure pushed itself to it's feet, covered head to foot in black ash. It shook it's head, sending a pigtail flying out, and brushed the ash off to reveal a red shirt and block trousers. Ranma paused, then took stock of his situation. Black ground covered in sticky ash surrounded him, and the sky above him was the colour of blood. A sinking feeling settled into his stomach as he reached out with his ki, only to find a sickly void surrounding him. No life. Not even insects, and Ranma knew just how many bugs there should have been, even near a volcano which could put out this much ash.

A grumbling noise drew Ranma out of his introspection, and he turned to possibly the most terrifying sight he'd yet to come across. A monster stood in front of him, towering to at least twelve feet tall, and seemingly half that across. It carried an axe in one hand, and as Ranma's eyes took it in he noted that the axe blade was practically as big as he was. The monster appeared unhappy to see him, and it's beady black eyes focussed on him as it drew in a breath. Ranma's brain disconnected as it let the breath out in an earth-shaking roar, drawing the axe back for a killing strike on the stationary martial artist. Luckily for the pig-tailed boy his father had been drilling combat into him so well that he could dodge attacks in his sleep, and the massively telegraphed attack spoke straight to the part of Ranma that had kept him alive for so long. He sidestepped the attack as the demon launched an overhead smash, the blade burying itself deep into the ash and rock where Ranma had stood. Still on autopilot Ranma responded, launching several strikes at the side of the creature as he danced around to it's back. A small part of him noted the tiny wings on it's back as his brain started to reconnect, and he began forcing more ki into his strikes as he kept himself behind the beast as it turned to face him again, swinging the axe in a lateral sweep to catch him. The spikes of ki seemed to do little to the creature, and Ranma danced out of reach to consider his options.

The space he created for himself gave him some time to think as the creature regained it's balance after it's hasty swing, and now that he had regained his own mental balance he gave it a critical view. Big, slow, heavily armed, able to shrug off blows like Ryoga and quite possibly some kind of demon. As the creature started to make it's way toward him Ranma gave a decisive nod. _Get serious, and finish this quickly_, he thought to himself. _This thing isn't going to mess around, or let me go if it manages to injure me._ Ranma pulled his ki through his body, energising him and letting him feel something of his opponent. It was mostly a void to his aura, but if he concentrated his sight on it there was the barest flicker of life at it's centre. _Good,_ he thought as he gathered his power to himself. _If it's alive then it can die, and if it can die it can be wounded._ The monster bellowed another challenge as it came within range, spittle flying from it's mouth, and Ranma flickered forward to fight, a final hysterical thought running across his mind before he danced into combat. _Damnit Ryoga, because of you I'm seeing Hell!_


	2. Chapter 2

AN: Chapter 2, remarkably quickly. Thanks for the reviews, good calls 'Blinded in a Bolthole', I've given them a shot.

* * *

_**Ryoga, Tristain Academy of Magic, Halkeginia **_

A trained martial artist can go from deep sleep to entirely awake quickly enough to dodge assassination attempts, random lightning strikes and, in Ryoga's case, glasses of cold water thrown at his face. The cold liquid landed safely onto the pillow where Ryoga's head had just been, to the annoyance of the girl who had just thrown it at him. Her voice raised in an obviously annoyed shriek,

"How I miss!" Ryoga stared at her, his body tensed and prepared to dodge at the sight of more water from the obviously temperamental girl. This seemed to annoy her even more, and she flung the now empty glass at him, a vein in her head throbbing in poorly hidden rage. Ryoga was used to having things flung at him, and caught the glass with one hand, letting it move his hand back slightly to make sure he didn't smash it on his hand as he caught it. She stared at him for several seconds, before her shoulders dropped and the anger seemed to fade into a dark expression. She threw herself onto a chair next to the bed where Ryoga had been asleep, and proceeded to brood silently.

Ryoga swallowed nervously and placed the glass down on the nearest table, his gaze shifting around the room as he tried to find out where he was. It wasn't a particularly small room, with walls made of well fitted stone and woven tapestries covering over most of the stone. The floor was covered over with thick rugs, and the pieces of furniture were made of deep brown wood. The edges of the furniture were artistically carved into flowing lines, and the wood itself was smoothed over with some kind of varnish.

The whole setup screamed of money and taste, which hammered down into Ryoga's hindbrain, lighting off subconscious warnings. A look at what was on the furniture brought the warnings screaming into the front of his mind, as the clothes, brushes and toiletries said two things to Ryoga. He was in a bedroom. He was in a _girl's bedroom_. His gaze skipped back to the girl slumped in the chair. He was in this girls bedroom, she had kissed him on the cheek, and he was male. Even a passing glance at Ranma's life would have warned someone that this wasn't good, and Ryoga had had more than a passing glimpse at the insanity involved in Ranma's life. A thought bubbled up loudly into his brain. _I'm screwed_.

Ryoga forced down the nervousness the girl caused in him and cleared his throat before speaking up in his shaky Belgian.

"Who.. er.. you?" The girl ignored him, her body tensing in on itself in annoyance. Ryoga furrowed his brow before trying again.

"I Ryoga. Where we?" He could see the muscles in her jaw flexing, and Ryoga resolved to give talking one more try.

"This Japan?" The girls composure broke with a scream of annoyance, and she whipped out a short stick of wood, pointing it at him as she shouted a word that Ryoga didn't understand. He started to dodge whatever it was she was doing, but was a fraction too slow and was again the centre of a violent, yet brief, explosion. When he opened his eyes again he was still standing where he had been, but with a scorch mark burnt onto the rugs at his feet. He stared at the pink-haired girl, who was breathing hard as she kept what could only have been a magic wand pointed at him.

"Kami, fine, I won't speak to you then," Ryoga muttered in Japanese. This seemed to make the girl stand up in shock, her eyebrows tightening toward the centre of her face as she opened her mouth and spoke in a tone of surprise,

"You mean you can actually speak proper Tristainian? Then why were you speaking like a pig-man!?" The girl shook her head even as the martial artist looked back at her in shock. From his point of view she had suddenly started speaking perfect, unaccented Japanese, which was a far cry from the faux-Belgian she had been speaking when he woke up. The girl steam-rolled on, however, though she seemed a bit happier now that she knew he wasn't incapable of speaking her language fluently.

"Doesn't matter anyway, you're still a useless _commoner_ anyway. And one who fainted during the summoning to boot!" The words were spat at him, though Ryoga could hear that some of the anger was aimed at herself. Still, he would not be accused of fainting, as if he was weak or something.

"I didn't faint!" The lost boy raised his voice to make his point, only to be whacked across the face by the end of the stick that the girl still held. It didn't hurt, but it was a surprise to Ryoga.

The girl stalked away after smacking him on the face, and sat back down in the chair. Her posture was much better now, mused Ryoga, back straight, head up. There was some training there. She met his eyes for a moment, then drew breath.

"Well, commoner, it seems you have an opportunity that most of your ilk will never have. Somehow you are my familiar, summoned through a magical ritual. I am Louise Françoise Le Blanc de la Vallière, one of the Noble families of Tristain. You may address me as Master. Now, follow me, and I may allow you to eat something today." Throughout Louise's speech Ryoga's eyebrows had been rising up his forehead, and Louise's bearing seemed to come back to her. As she finished her speech she stood up, raised her chin, and gestured imperiously for him to follow her. Ryoga watched as she marched past him, then shrugged and followed. She'd said something about dinner, after all, and he had no wish to get lost before he got something to eat.

As the pair walked through the stone corridors of the castle Ryoga stared left and right at each new sight. They were using burning lamps for light, and the glass in both the windows and the lamps seemed thicker and more warped than he was used to at home. He found this quite odd, as last time he was in the Belgian-speaking part of Africa they had electric lights, along with a distinct lack of stone castles that actually saw use. As they passed through the corridors Ryoga noted several people that had been present at his first introduction to the small girl walking in front of him. They jogged his memory of the events that had led up to his entirely manly and understandable loss of consciousness.

He looked down at his left hand, noting the thick black lettering that decorated the back of his hand. His wandering had taken him to most places throughout his cursed life, and this had given him a working use of most spoken languages. His writing was less accomplished, but the symbols on his hand were nothing that he had ever seen before. They were formal letters, however, and he considered that they might have just been from a language that he had never seen before. He ran his fingertips over the runes as they walked, and noted that they didn't either hurt or seem to tighten his skin when he made a fist. He figured that they wouldn't affect him, and therefore left them alone.

The other memory he had was much more worrying, and a lot harder to investigate. His ki had been pulled on, twisted out to touch the girl he followed through the halls, and this worried him. He had never been a fan of meditation, but he had used it to master the _shi shi hokodan_, and could at least feel his ki flow through his body without too much effort. He willed his mind to calm, and reached out to the flow of his life force. In an instant he knew that something was wrong, and a second later he knew what it was. The shock knocked him out of the brief meditation, and distracted him from where he was. Unfortunately, he and Louise had been walking down stairs, and this distraction caused him to topple down the last few to the bottom, where he landed in a heap.

Louise let off a sigh of irritation, and stalked down the last few steps to where the heavy-set boy was climbing back to his feet. As he stood and looked at her, he seemed to shy away from her, his hands and arms tensing towards himself. She shook her head at him as he stood watching her.

"Are stairs an issue for you?" Her tone was caustic, and Ryoga shrank a little under her gaze. He'd never been good with angry females, he knew that much, but the sheer level of anger the little girl could seem to summon at the slightest provocation was truly scary.

"Hmph. Come on." She walked past him, her mind clearly on other things as she nearly walked into someone stood just beyond Ryoga.

"Watch your step, Zero." The voice sneered a little as the taller girl avoided being walked into by Louise. Ryoga looked at who it was, and had to focus himself, lest he be thrown backwards from a vicious nosebleed.

The red-head from his summoning was stood in front of them, backed up by a pretty hefty lizard. Not quite as large as the sumo pigs that Akari kept, Ryoga mused, but not much smaller either. She was wearing a similar uniform to Louise, a white shirt with a cloak clasped at the throat, a black skirt and dark shoes, but as Ryoga was occasionally made aware, the devil was in the details. The shirt seemed to be a size too small for what it contained, and enough buttons had been left undone to make sure that anyone looking would find themselves taking a second, and a third, look. The skirt was a normal length but the legs were not, leaving the impression that if the skirt were any smaller it would be more appropriate to call it a belt. And the shoes were leather boots that stretched up the length of the girls legs, stopping just short of the skirt and being leather trousers.

All in all, a sight many men would have killed to be summoned by, a small part of Ryoga's mind whispered. He snapped his eyes to the girl's face in an effort to avoid passing out from girl-induced nosebleed, only to find her staring at him with an entirely too amused expression for his liking. As he considered his options, he became aware that an explosive hissing was coming from his side, and glanced left to see Louise with an expression of rage on her face, and her hand had a white-knuckled grasp on her wand as the hissing turned into words.

"Kirche." Ryoga was honestly surprised by the anger in the pink-haired girls voice. Then again, if he remembered correctly, this Kirche had been the first one to pass comment after his arrival. Louise continued, still sounding less than happy.

"What do you want." Kirche let a smirk onto her lips, as she answered with more than a little viciousness of her own.

"Why nothing much, little Louise. Just wanted to see if you were going to trail around this commoner you've conned into pretending to be your familiar. Mind you, I wouldn't mind seeing a bit more of him." Ryoga blushed at the implication from that last statement as the meaning hit him. Louise, by contrast, was more concerned with the first part of her words.

"Why would I _con_ anybody, Kirche? I did the spell, and he's what came!" The words came out with more than a little anger. The taller girl rolled her eyes and started to walk away as she responded to Louise's retort.

"Of course. Louise the Zero managed a spell, how cute..." Kirche trailed off into a chuckle as she walked away, and Louise stared after her, mumbling angry curses under her breath until the redhead left her sight.

Louise snapped her gaze over to Ryoga, who backed away from the anger in the girl's eyes before it dulled away to a smouldering irritation. She jerked her head, indicating that Ryoga should continue to follow, before speaking over her shoulder to the martial artist.

"Familiar, you would normally be told to eat with the familiars of the other students, however I doubt they would have the right food for a commoner..." Louise was interrupted by Ryoga letting out a startled yell, and the sharp sound of glass breaking. She turned to see what was happening, only to be greeted with a face full of water as the water from the glass Ryoga had batted away from himself splashed straight into her. Ryoga stood frozen, hand still outstretched from where he had batted the falling glass away, and the maid who had dropped it stood similarly frozen.

"Familiar..." Louise's voice had dropped to a growl, and the white-knuckled grasp on her wand had returned. The water dripped down her face and shirt, and Ryoga prepared himself to be the centre of another explosion.

The preparation was well warranted, and the blast seemed to be sufficient to dry off Louise and somewhat scorch the hapless maid standing to the side. As the maid passed the little noble another napkin to finish drying herself the pink haired girl kept her gaze on the smoking body of Ryoga as he levered himself back to his feet.

"You will not be eating today, familiar. Stay with the other animals until I fetch you, _dog_." The words were said with precision, and the venom on the last word seemed to be capable of eating through the stone walls surrounding them. Louise turned on her heel and stalked angrily into the main hall, and Ryoga shook his head again, trying to clear the ringing from his ears.

The maid tried to clear her throat in the quietest way in order to get the martial artists attention.

"Sir?" The word itself barely made it from her lips as the maid attempted to ascertain if the recently exploded man would be able to make his own way onwards. "Are you okay?"

Ryoga coughed and held a thumb up at the maid before waving her hands away and brushing the soot off himself. When he judged himself to be sufficiently cleaned he looked at the girl quizzically, drawing in a breath to speak.

"Er. Hi. Sorry about the scorching." Ryoga gestured at the black streaks on the maids face and apron as he spoke. The maid ducked her head, clearly embarrassed to be apologised to, and made a quiet noise that seemed to be an acceptance. Seeing nothing else was going to be forthcoming, and that Louise had disappeared, Ryoga decided to ask for directions.

"You don't happen to know where the familiars are, do you?" He asked hesitantly. The maid bobbed her head slightly, then pointed towards one of the passageways leading off from their corridor. Ryoga nodded in acceptance, replying to her non-verbal gesture with a grin and another thumbs up.

Ryoga looked at the passageway the maid had indicated, and set off walking down it, keeping his eyes peeled for more unexpected water. He really didn't need to become a pig right now, not while he didn't have his kettle. Eventually he reached the end of the corridor, which opened into a large hall. The hall was filled with as many different types of animal as Ryoga had ever seen, and in groupings which seemed _off_ to him somehow. There was a leopard sitting next to what appeared to be a small bear, and what appeared to be a strange cousin of a peacock eating from a tray next to where a fox was grooming it's tail. Predators next to prey, with no indication of any issue, or of one eating another.

There was the sense of something big moving near him, and Ryoga whirled to see the lizard that had been following Kirche sidling along a wall toward a pile of rocks. Ryoga looked properly at the pile, and noticed that what he had taken for a large mound of stone was breathing in a regular time, swelling and shrinking very slightly every few seconds. A chill ran down Ryoga's spine as he contemplated exactly how big a lizard the pile would make, and came up with an answer that he didn't like in the slightest.

Suddenly, Ryoga was struck with another thought, delivered straight from his stomach. He had now not eaten for around a day, and his body decided to let him know that it disapproved of this with a loud rumble. Ryoga rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment, looking round to see if he could see anyone who looked appropriately chef-like. He caught sight of another maid ducking through a door with a pile of dishes, and decided to follow her. Moving through the door he came to a short corridor, and wandered down it to find one of the busiest kitchens he'd yet to be in.

As he walked in a man in a chef's hat zipped up to him, and barred his path, wringing his hands nervously.

"Ah no, honoured student, the kitchens are not for folk as you, please, allow me to escort you back to the dining hall." The man was bowing reflexively in front of Ryoga, and he attempted to usher the martial artist from the room, only to run into something many others had learnt. If Ryoga Hibiki did not wish to move, then Ryoga Hibiki did not move.

"Ah, sir?" The chef looked at him with wide eyes, and Ryoga held his hands in front of him, attempting to calm the man down.

"All I'm after is some food," Ryoga said slowly. "And I'm not a student here. I'm a..." he paused briefly. "Well, I guess I'm a familiar." The chef straightened up, the nervousness vanishing as he realised he was not speaking to a noble.

"Oh! Well, that's not a problem then. Food you said?" Ryoga nodded in response, prompting the man to break out into a smile. "Follow me then friend!" Ryoga followed the man to a short table, where he was given a bowl of stew, and a hunk of still warm bread, and left to his own devices. Ryoga took a bite, and decided that he could get to like this place. The stew was almost exactly as he cooked it, only with some different spices than he normally chose. The meal disappeared as Ryoga relieved his empty stomach, and by the time the last bit was gone he was feeling a lot more like his normal self.

The business of the kitchen carried on around him, and Ryoga watched them moving around, noting again the differences to what he'd thought the Belgian people used to cook. After all, he was fairly sure that they knew about electricity and gas, and used them to cook. _Maybe they were traditionalists_, he thought. Surveying the room again he found the door he had entered by, moving back through it to get back to the hall of familiars. As he entered the room he heard Louise shouting for him, and clearly getting agitated about it.

"Familiar! Where are you!?" Ryoga winced. The last thing she'd said was 'no food'. Better not tell her where he'd been then. He cleared his throat as he came up behind the pink-haired girl, causing her to spin round and pin him with a sharp glare.

"And where have you been, hmm?" The words conveyed no small amount of displeasure with his actions, and he brought his hand up to his hair in discomfort as he answered with a touch of hesitation.

"Ah... I got lost." Her eyes narrowed, and she sniffed imperiously, apparently accepting his words as reasonable, if annoying. She jerked her head at him, before walking towards a large door set into one wall. Ryoga took that to mean that he should follow her, and hurried to catch up to her before she reached the door. As they reached it he thought about what he'd just used as his excuse. Odd. He_hadn't _got lost. He'd followed directions, picked the right door, and managed to get back to where he needed to be, all without taking a single wrong turning. He filed that to be looked into later, after all, if his curse was gone then his life would be taking a significant turn for the better. Then all he would need to lose would be the pig, and he'd be the happiest man on earth.

The door in the wall led to the outside, opening into a field which had several long tables set out in the sunlight. Several people in uniform were already sat at the tables, some with friends, some alone, but all talking animatedly at some kind of animal. He looked at Louise in confusion, who just blew out her breath in a quick sigh, and sat at an empty stretch of table. He stood for a moment longer, before she pointed at a seat on the other side, and he moved to sit at it. They sat in silence before Louise spoke up.

"This is supposed to be a time for master and familiar to get to know each other, so I'm going to lay down the ground rules. I am your Master. So what I say goes. Got it?"

Ryoga straightened his back as she spoke, his eyes narrowing as he considered his findings from earlier against what she was telling him. When he had checked his ki he had found a string of it leaving his body and cycling through somebody else. By the sound of it she had linked the two of them through their life force, and this knowledge felt like someone had just rammed a rod of ice into Ryoga's spine. Ki bonds were supposed to be impossible without a long, long relationship first. It was handing a piece of your soul to someone else, a profoundly intimate and personal act. It was something that was supposed to need active participation from both people, as there would now be a bit of each in the other, unless they could break the bond. Ryoga licked his suddenly dry lips, the cold down his spine refusing to leave.

"I think I have a problem with this." His voice was steady, which was more than could be said of his head. "You've linked our lives. What gave you the right to..."

"The right?" Louise interrupted Ryoga with an affronted look on her face. "I'm a noble, you're just a commoner, you can't argue with me! I don't need approval for what I've done."

"A commoner? What does my birth have to do with anything!?" Ryoga was heating up into an argument, unable to believe that this little brat thought she had the right to tear him out of his life.

"Your birth has everything to do with it! Brimir handed down the right to rule to the nobles, it's your moral duty to follow our commands! Now stop arguing with me, or I'll be forced to punish you!" Louise had shot to her feet with that, Ryoga's words incensing her. Ryoga imitated her, towering over her short frame with his own bulky one.

"Moral duty to obey? I've seen enough to know that slavery is one of the furthest things from moral! And it'll be a cold day in hell when I..."

_CRACK_. Louise had snatched a short riding crop from the belt she had put on this morning, and smacked the large boy across the face with it. The pair of them paused to look at the offending item, Ryoga to see what she'd hit him with, and Louise because she hadn't expected it to break on the first use.

Ryoga tilted his head to the side as he looked at the little piece of inflexible wood she'd used to hit him, then looked back at her. For a moment his jaw tightened, and his hands curled up, before he shook his head and stalked away from the table. Louise, in contrast, slowly sat back down, staring at the remains of the crop. She'd used similar on the horses at home when being taught to ride. The only way they could break was if the thing they hit wasn't moved at all by the hit. So he hadn't even turned his face, and there wasn't even a mark. She shivered a bit, wondering exactly who her familiar was.

* * *

_**Ranma. Lost.**_

There was a light in one direction. That's all he could see from the top of the mound of rock and ash he'd spent most of the last few hours climbing. Looking everywhere else was just more of what he was standing on. Ash and rock, with a few scattered pillars and mounds jutting out of the monotonous flatness. There were some moving figures, scattered a little way off towards the light, and Ranma was reminded of the creature he'd been forced to kill. It simply hadn't stopped. He'd broken bones, dislocated joints, but even when he'd driven one of it's vestigial bone wings through it's back the creature hadn't stopped trying to kill him. It had simply healed itself and set off after him like a bloodhound. He'd made it a clean death, at least, using the creature's own axe to bring it's life to a close. The body had disintegrated a few seconds after death, leaving Ranma holding an axe embedded into the floor. He'd left it there, unable to look at it.

Since then he'd avoided several more, slipping into the skills he'd learnt from the _umisenken_ school his father had created. But he was losing strength, he could feel it. He needed to eat, or he'd run too low on ki to be able to invert it successfully enough to hide himself. So he gritted his jaw, and began heading toward the white light on the horizon. He just had to hope he would make it.

* * *

_**Nabiki, Nerima, Earth.**_

It had been over 24 hours now since both Ryoga and Ranma had disappeared into a green oval, and Nabiki was starting to worry. Not that she let _that_ show of course. After all, for all the damage that Ranma could cause to the house, he was good for so much income. And the house needed that, badly. After all, the fathers Tendo and Saotome spent most of the money that fell into their hands on sake, Akane was still at school and Kasumi had taken over running the house when mother passed away. So the only people in the house with the time to gain money were Ranma and her.

And yes, quite a bit of her money came from Ranma. Both Kunos would pay good money for photos of both of Ranma's sides. There were the fights, the fiancée pool... He'd slid so well into the running of Nabiki's little kingdom that she'd almost forgotten that he might leave. So, quite simply, he needed to come back. And not just because he brought in the money, but also because he could deal with the martial artists who caused a great deal of money to be spent. There'd been a visit from almost every power in Nerima, all trying to find out if the rumours were true, or celebrating the fact with a little detour through the Tendo household. And without the self-proclaimed 'Best martial artist in the world' in the house, removing them was turning out to be... difficult. That was it, Nabiki thought. He was needed, and needed here.

Still, there was one power who was yet to visit, and Nabiki had a feeling she was waiting for a bit of peace before she took it upon herself to come in. She'd managed to finally roll the last of the invading martial artists out, with a few choice threats about some compromising pictures, when there was a polite cough from behind her. Nabiki turned her head, feeling slightly frazzled at the effort she'd had to put out to clear out the house, and saw Cologne perched on her stick in the middle of the kitchen.

"Couldn't you have stuck your head out a little earlier, Cologne?" Nabiki said with more than a little exasperation in her voice. "Maybe moved some of the more rowdy ones on a bit faster?"

The wizened Amazon matriarch laughed at the vastly younger girl, murmuring her reply,

"Privilege of age, young one. One day you will enjoy it too." Nabiki rolled her eyes, and gestured at the table, inviting the sometime ally, sometime enemy, to sit.

"Tea?" Nabiki asked, running off what Kasumi would have done had she not been asleep already. It would have taken more than a horde of martial artists to put off Kasumi's routine, after all. Cologne nodded, perching herself at the side of the low table and watching the teenager pour for both of them. The mismatched pair sat for a few moments, sipping the tea and allowing them both to relax for a moment.

Nabiki broke the silence with the obvious question.

"Do you know what happened?" Cologne sipped her tea pensively, before placing the cup on the table, and calmly replying.

"Describe the scene for me again. I may have misheard earlier." Nabiki nodded, and went through the events of the last day, noting the green oval that appeared and stole both martial artists without a sound. Cologne hunched over her tea cup, sipping it as Nabiki spoke, and as her tale wound down she seemed to look her full age.

"I believe I know what has happened." Cologne stared down into the tea as she spoke, clearly struggling to recall what she spoke of. "It has happened before in our legends. An oval of green light, swallowing up one of our sisters and vanishing in a flash." Nabiki was leaning forward, entranced, and bit her lip as she asked the matriarch a question.

"Can we get him back?"

Cologne paused, meeting Nabiki's eyes over the rim of her teacup as she considered the girls question, before sighing and answering.

"I know of no way to bring those summoned back from this side." Nabiki's eyes widened at this, and she drew breath to respond angrily, before being stopped by Cologne's raised hand.

"However," the matriarch continued, "There are methods that can be used to _follow_ those who have been summoned." The ancient Amazon stood and paced back and forth beside the table as she considered what needed to be done. "Ranma and Ryoga have been summoned to another world, one both at the other end of the cosmos, and yet barely the thickness of a cat's whisker away. The worlds are closest when the sun is in eclipse, and if you know the path then you can step between worlds as if you were stepping through a door."

Nabiki stood too, pacing on her side of the table.

"So," she said eagerly, "we just need to know when and where the next eclipse will be. Then we can go there, step through, and bring him home."

"Them." Noted Cologne with a slight tilt of her head. Nabiki flapped a hand at her, and then nodded.

"Give me a moment," she muttered, before vanishing upstairs. Cologne watched her go, then sat back down at the table, pouring herself another cup of tea. She had drunk half of it when Nabiki appeared through the door, clutching a scribbled set of notes. The girl spread them out on the table, pointing at the top-most line. A date, time and place, two weeks from now. Cologne looked at Nabiki, a curious smile playing around her lips.

"You have two weeks to teach me how to walk this path of yours, and to tell me everything you know about this place. I'm bringing them back." Nabiki's tone was commanding, and Cologne raised an eyebrow at this new development. This was something she might have expected from Akane, not the fabled ice queen of Nerima. Thinking for a moment, Cologne decided to test this new facet of Nabiki.

"And what will you give me for this help?" Nabiki's eyes narrowed in response, darting from side to side as she thought about it. She wetted her lips, swallowed and quietly answered the woman.

"What do you want?"


	3. Chapter 3

_**Ryoga, Tristainian Academy of Magic, Halkeginia.**_

Ryoga stalked away from the tables where Louise was sat with no small amount of anger rising in him. She'd linked them through their life-force, and from what she had said he doubted she'd be willing to split them up without a fight. Ryoga growled to himself, knowing that it would be _easy_ to knock her down, he had enough strength in his index finger to break bones. But that would change him. If he did that he would no longer be a martial artist, he'd be a thug. Even Ranma wouldn't fight someone who couldn't take it, and whatever Ryoga Hibiki _was_, he knew that he would never stoop below Ranma Saotome.

He turned a corner, and ran into a group of people surrounding a tall boy with brown hair as he talked to a pair of girls. Ryoga was close enough to hear the conversation, and he slowed down to listen. It seemed the girls had the idea that the boy was seeing both of them, but his silver tongue was getting him out of it. Ryoga stood for a moment, and then the anger surged. For a moment he was stood back in Nerima, watching Ranma talk his way out of Akane's rightful anger, And the whole mess fell away into his old ways.

"So you're both just going to let him talk his way out, huh?" Ryoga's voice was low, growling with anger as he moved towards the trio. The gaze of both girls snapped over to him, their eyes narrowing as they considered his words.

"You're just going to let him get away with two-timing you both?" Ryoga continued, his anger at the situation replacing his sight with memory as he kept talking. "Just like he always does, and like he always will?" He didn't hate Ranma, not any more. But his ki had always filtered through depression, and it was so _easy_ to slip from that into hate.

The boy was backing away from both of the girls, hands waving in front of him as he tried to talk his way out of the trouble Ryoga had just dumped him back into. Unfortunately, Ryoga's words had come at just the right time, and the girls were both back up into righteous anger.

_CRACK_. The first girl slapped the boy across the face and stalked away. The boy then turned his attention to the second girl, trying to recover his poise.

_CRACK_. The second girl followed suit on the other side of the boy's face, leaving him with a matched set of hand-prints, then sniffed haughtily and strode away. The boy paused for a moment, then turned on the still-angry, but now somewhat mollified Ryoga. After all, the Ranma substitute had just been given his comeuppance, so Ryoga was a bit happier. However, the boy was not.

"You, ruffian, how dare you make two beautiful ladies cry!" The boy was pointing a rose at him, and had exactly the same upper-class mode of speech that made Kuno such a mocked figure in Nerima. Ryoga looked at the boy, giving him the customary once-over check to see if he posed a threat. Ryoga's first thought was _fop_. It was his second and third thought, too. The boy was wearing an open chested shirt, formal trousers and was carrying a long-stemmed rose in his right hand. His face was, Ryoga supposed, more attractive than most, with a lack of the scars and hardening that most martial artists acquired as they trained. His hair was blonde, and kept long, in a ruffled style. Still, his stance wasn't bad, and as Ryoga looked closer, the hints of some kind of training showed through. Probably not with any formal Art, but certainly with some kind of military.

As Ryoga completed his evaluation, the boy had clearly been performing his own.

"Hmph. A ruffian indeed. Where did you find your clothes, a ditch?" The blonde boy kept an aristocratic sneer on his face as he spoke. "Still, it is polite to introduce oneself, even to a rude commoner. My name is Guiche de Grammont, firstborn son of the honoured General Grammont. And who are you, ruffian?"

Ryoga could feel the tension in the air. There was going to be a fight here, he could tell. The blonde would not back down, and Ryoga was itching for a good spar. After all, his fight with Ranma had been rather unceremoniously cut short. The martial artist cracked his knuckles, and let his fangs dip over his lips as he responded.

"My name is Ryoga Hibiki, you womanising fop."

The blonde's eyes tightened, and his hand tightened on the rose. Ryoga watched with amusement, knowing what was coming next, eagerly anticipating it.

"Such arrogance, from one who broke the composure of two ladies, cannot be allowed to continue. You will fight me, and when I have you beaten, _commoner_, you will make a full apology. Not to me, I feel nothing for your impetuous insult, but to the ladies you have wronged." It was exactly what Ryoga wanted, the blonde's words were perfect.

"And when I've beaten you, _fop_, you will make a full apology to the girls for being a cheating, womanising pervert." Ryoga's words incensed the blonde, and seemed to amuse the crowd, which was growing ever larger as people grabbed their friends to watch the fight. Ryoga glanced around, then continued speaking. "Where do you wish to be beaten, _fop_."

The word was brilliant, thought Ryoga, as the blonde boy seemed to draw himself into a rage every time he used it. Eventually the boy mastered himself, ice lacing his words as he responded.

"The main courtyard. Ten minutes." With those words, Guiche turned on his heel and strode away, followed by the majority of the crowd as they began loudly speaking amongst themselves. Ryoga watched him go, a pleased smile on his face. A spar would be good fun. Ryoga creased his brow as his ears informed him of an odd hissing sound from behind him, and he turned to see the angry face of Louise, his unasked-for, and likely to be permanent, companion.

"What, _exactly_, do you think you are doing, familiar." The hissing had given way to words which seemed laced with the fires of hell. "You leave for less than five minutes, and you are already provoking people _far_ above your station. You will come with me, and apologise, and maybe Guiche will be gracious enough to avoid beating you too badly." Her wand was back in her hand, Ryoga noticed, and her grip had gone white-knuckled again. Still, he wanted this fight, and was not about to back down now.

"No." His response was clear, and while her anger made him briefly reconsider, he had no true thoughts about giving any other. "Can you show me where this courtyard is. I don't want to get lost on the way." The words, delivered in a calm voice, seemed to puncture Louise's anger, and she seemed to deflate.

"Fine. Maybe having your head beaten in will make you a more tractable familiar anyway." The anger was still in her voice, but there were undercurrents of disappointment tracing through it.

Louise gestured down a passageway, and led the martial artist to the courtyard where Guiche stood, rose in hand. The courtyard was surrounded by a throng of students, all waiting to see the commoner get beaten. The blonde squared his shoulders as the pair arrived, waiting for Ryoga to move in front of him before he spoke.

"I will give you one last chance to flee, commoner. I am not without mercy, and if you apologise to the flowers of womanhood that you wronged I will forget your unseemly words.

Ryoga grinned at the boy, and settled into an aggressive stance.

"Bring it, _fop_."

"I would not dirty my hands with fighting," sniffed the blonde imperiously. "My magic shall provide your opponent – the Bronze Valkyrie!" He brandished the rose he held, and one petal dropped to the floor. Ryoga watched it in confusion, which turned to shock as the petal expanded into a seven foot tall metal golem between the boy and himself. He had seen no ki spike from either the boy, the rose or the petal, which meant that this magic was slightly more useful than any he had seen back home. Still, a golem was hardly the best thing for the boy to have summoned against him.

Guiche, it seemed, had a measure of control over the metal giant, as his voice emerged from behind it.

"Attack, my Valkyrie, but do not kill him!"

Ryoga's grin grew to a full smile, and he raised his fists in front of him. Oddly, the runes on his left hand seemed to glow slightly, and he felt his ki surge more strongly within him. As the golem moved forward to attack, Ryoga slid to the side, trying to duck under a metal arm as it swung for his head and overshot completely. His ki had seemed to spike as he dodged, speeding him up and leaving him stood behind the metal giant. The golem stumbled to a halt, the rudimentary intelligence running it obviously confused at the disappearance of it's foe. Ryoga stared down at the runes, and gave an amazed chuckle, alerting the golem to his presence again, and it turned to resume the attack.

_This is... interesting,_ thought Ryoga, as he danced around another blow. He would normally have been only just fast enough to dodge the strikes, probably choosing to weather the blows instead, however the runes seemed to boost his body significantly above where it should have been. He was faster, maybe even as fast as Ranma, and yet still as strong as he always had been. Then, Ryoga tilted his head in thought. _What if I'm stronger, too_, he thought with a mental grin. Deciding to test this, the next time the golem swung he dodged round it, and darted in, levelling a punch at the golem's shoulder. The strike tore through the metal, sending the arm spinning away to land across the courtyard. The crowd, who had been growing restless from the constant dodging, suddenly went silent, focussing on the damage Ryoga had produced in a single hit.

Both Ryoga and Guiche were also staring at the damage the martial artist had caused. Ryoga was staring in amazement, switching between watching the Valkyrie try to regain it's balance and examining the runes on his hand in awe. Guiche was staring only at the Valkyrie in more than a little horror. His father himself had complimented him on the golems that he could make, stating that they would be a fine addition to the battle, and this commoner had torn off an arm with a single punch.

The Valkyrie got it's balance back, and Ryoga glanced at Guiche to see if he was about to pull any other surprises out of his bag, only to see the blonde staring at him with utter terror. _Well, guess the spar's over then_, thought Ryoga glumly. _Didn't last long. Better finish the golem though_. The Valkyrie, adapting to the lost limb, readied itself and charged at the bandanna wearing martial artist, who gathered his ki together and mentally prepared himself to use one of his techniques.

The crowd seemed to collectively draw breath as the yellow-shirted boy stood in the path of the charging figure of metal without flinching, and watched with bated breath as he raised his arm and extended a single finger. Ryoga brought the ki to his finger, and as the Valkyrie swung it's fist at him he moved to meet it, saying the name of the first ki technique he'd learnt, the Breaking Point.

"_Bakusai Tenketsu._"

The golem shattered into slivers, which crumbled to the ground around the martial artist, knocking dust and dirt up from the ground as it clattered down. Ryoga brushed his shirt clean of the dust, and turned to face the wide-eyed figure of Guiche, who seemed to have lost his voice completely with the destruction of his Valkyrie. The courtyard was silent, and Ryoga glanced around before walking forward towards the frozen figure of his opponent. The colour seemed to drain from Guiche's face the closer Ryoga came, until he stopped within arms reach when Guiche's face was bone white. Ryoga raised his arm, placing his fingertip less than an inch away from the pale boy's forehead, and leaned forward to hiss a word.

"Yield?"

Inside, Ryoga was quivering with laughter. It was just like with Ranma, back when he'd learnt the Breaking Point the first time. The technique did nothing to living matter, the ki flows were just too flexible and there was no set point to overwhelm with ki to cause the object to shatter. But just as Ranma hadn't known it then, Guiche didn't know it now. And unlike Ranma, Guiche was nowhere near good enough to simply avoid Ryoga's fingertips.

The blonde boy's eyes were stretched out wide, and he had to try three times before he could get a word out.

"Yes." Guiche's word was barely above a whisper, and yet the courtyard was so quiet that even those at the back of the crowd heard it. Ryoga didn't move.

"You will apologise?" he asked, keeping his finger pointed at Guiche, who swallowed nervously and whispered back.

"Yes."

"Good." And with that, Ryoga retracted the finger, walking back to the stunned figure of Louise standing at the other side of the square. She swallowed just as nervously as Guiche had when he came close to her, but the spar, brief as it was, had provided Ryoga with something good from the bond, and he was nowhere near as stressed as he had been, so he simply smiled at her, saying:

"Shall we finish our talk now?"

* * *

The pair returned to their original seats at the benches, though this time a lot more people were paying attention to the duo. Louise still looked shaken by the result of the fight, the idea of a noble being beaten so comprehensively by a commoner taking a while to set in. Ryoga himself simply sat there waiting, looking into his ki to try and find out what exactly the runes had done to him. Eventually Louise looked up, and stared at the man she had summoned, in what was the first spell she had ever successfully completed.

"Who are you?" Louise's question was asked quietly, with none of the arrogance which had coloured her earlier words. Ryoga looked back at her, meeting her eyes as he spoke.

"My name is Ryoga Hibiki. I am a martial artist, and have been for most of my life." The words hung in the air for a moment, before Louise went on.

"And what you did to the Valkyrie... what you threatened to do to Guiche... was it magic?"

Ryoga gave a chuckle as she asked, shaking his head in response.

"No, it's just ki. Anyone can do it, with training." Ryoga paused for a moment, and considered both his and Ranma's lives for a moment, then added: "A _lot_ of training."

Louise nodded, staring at her hands for a moment, then she folded them into her lap and looked up.

"You don't wish to be my familiar, do you?" She asked, every word picked out carefully, as though the wrong one would cause a cataclysm. Ryoga's mouth twisted. He didn't, but part of him knew that the speed and strength were due to the bond, and there was something in the back of his mind that didn't want to hurt the girl. And saying the words would hurt her, though Ryoga wasn't entirely sure why he knew that.

He paused for a moment, and then took in a breath.

"Lets just say I'm undecided at the moment, shall we?" Ryoga noted the lines of her face jerk up at his words, pulling her away from sadness, and felt the bit at the back of his mind relax. He hadn't hurt her. That was good.

They sat in silence for a few more minutes, before Louise cleared her throat softly, looking down at her hands again. Ryoga looked at her quizzically, waiting for her to keep going.

"Would you be able to... teach me?" Ryoga's brow furrowed as he considered the request. He _could_ teach her, he'd taught Akane Rhythmic Gymnastics Martial Arts in a week, after all. But how long would it take... A thought crossed Ryoga's mind, and he looked at the girl in confusion.

"Why do you want to learn martial arts, anyway? You're at a school for magic, surely you can... y'know, use that."

The girl hunched down tighter as Ryoga waited for a response, and the silence wound into the conversation. Eventually the girl snapped, her quiet time clearly exhausted by the previous conversation.

"I can't, okay!?" Her face had turned from embarrassment to anger, and the wand had found it's way back into her hand, held in a death-grip. "I'm useless at magic, does that make you feel better!?" Ryoga was hunching down in the face of the sudden anger he had apparently flared in the girl, preparing himself for the inevitable explosion. "You're the first thing that's gone right, as you can apparently use some kind of magic, and you will be helping me until everything else goes right too!" Louise's voice had now reached new heights of volume, and contrary to her claims of being useless of magic, it was apparently letting itself out in a somewhat destructive way. Plates on the table were shattering, and a heavy pressure was crushing everything around her to the floor.

Ryoga had time for the brief thought that this was probably what his foes felt under his Perfect _shi shi hokodan_, before the avatar of destruction in front of him pointed the wand at him and the pressure seemed to double.

"Is. That. Clear?" Her voice had dropped out of the clouds and gone straight back down to playing in the fires of hell again. Ryoga nodded frantically, at which point the pressure lifted, and he no longer felt like the universe was trying to crush him into the floor.

"Good." Louise had apparently calmed down from her wrathful moment, and was now seeming to consider the damage around her. She blinked at the broken pieces of crockery and furniture, and then clearly decided to just ignore it, walking away towards the castle proper.

Ryoga let himself lie there for a few more minutes, before making a mental note. _Try to find some way of her accessing her power in a less scary way, or she might not let up next time._ He gave a mental shudder. Who could have known so much rage could be placed in such a small girl.

* * *

_**Ranma. Still Lost.**_

Three hours later – which contained two fights, both of which ended with a monster's death, and a lot of sneaking – and a somewhat exhausted Ranma Saotome had made his way to the foot of a staircase up to a glowing set of walls. The lighting hadn't changed as he traversed the black plains, the sky remaining an ominous red, with no clouds or sunlight breaking through. Ranma was beginning to worry quite a bit about where he was, given the company he appeared to be keeping and the general sickly feel of the place.

Still, this place felt better, Ranma decided. Mentally crossing his fingers he made his way up the winding staircase, which snaked over a dark void as it rose. The steps narrowed as he climbed, until it was barely wide enough for two people to stand abreast, and with a sigh he came to a heavy wooden door, reinforced with dark iron. There were carvings in the wood and the metal, and as he looked at the stone walls which bracketed the door Ranma noted that there were more there too. There was barely an inch of space which did not have some form of symbol or inscription carved into it. Still, they weren't setting off Ranma's well-honed danger sense, so he raised a hand and pounded heavily on the door.

The answer seemed to take a while, and he was considering knocking again when he heard a series of clicks and heavy thuds from the door, before it was swung open, nearly knocking him off the narrow stairs. As Ranma recovered his balance he stared at who had opened the door. A woman in full plate armour stood there, with more of the sigils that adorned the door and walls carved into the metal. On her left arm she carried a large shield, embossed with an image of a dragon, and in her right hand she hefted a sword that seemed to glow with an unearthly light. Ranma was momentarily struck dumb with shock, as of all the things he might have thought he would see, a medieval knight was not near the top of the list.

The woman stared at him for a few moments, then spoke a word which rang like a bell in Ranma's mind before he immediately forgot everything about the word, other than the fact that it had just been said. The reaction seemed to surprise the knight, who had apparently been expecting a more fearful response, and she then seemed unsure of how to act.

Ranma took the opportunity, and introduced himself.

"Er.. Hi. I'm Ranma Saotome. Can I come in?" The boy's words were a little hesitant, his eyes still locked on the softly glowing sword held in the woman's hand, and she took a moment to look him over, before looking back at his face.

"You can try," she murmured, stepping backwards to give him room to enter. Ranma looked at her in confusion over the remark, wondering if that meant she would try to stop him. However, she had given him room, so he walked in the door. As he passed the threshold the woman seemed to lose a little of the tension in her face, and she gestured for him to come fully into the hall.

"You aren't a demon," she noted with a tone of curiosity. "Tyrael gave the impression that nothing lived down here that was not of demonic form. Nevertheless – well met, brother."

Ranma looked at the woman in confusion, before staring around the entrance hall in awe, noting the glowing pillars of dressed marble rising to the mosaic covered ceiling. Everything around them seemed to glow with an inner light, and even the floor seemed to put out a white sheen. Ranma looked back at the armoured girl, noting that she looked surprised to see his astonishment at the building.

"How can you have got to the Plains of Despair without passing through the Pandemonium Fortress?" The woman sounded surprised, rather than accusatory, so Ranma held off on his immediate 'Flee from angry woman' reflex, and answered her instead.

"I think I've got lost." The woman burst out into laughter at this response, gesturing towards the stairs leading out of the entrance hall.

"Do you often find yourself wandering Hell when you are lost, brother?" The woman sobered at the look on Ranma's face as she passed this comment.

"I'm... I'm in Hell?" Ranma stuttered the question through his shock, before a sudden thought hit him, moving straight out of his mouth. "Maybe Ryoga really _has_ seen hell, if he can get _me_ lost down here."

The woman simply shook her head, gesturing for the shocked martial artist to start walking up the stairs to where an old man stood talking to a hooded being with ethereal wings of light.

"Either way," she said, her voice coloured with curiosity again, "Tyrael and Cain will know what to do."

* * *

_**Nabiki, en route to the United States of America, Earth**_

Nabiki sat next to Shampoo and Cologne on the jet as they soared across the Pacific ocean towards America, and entertained herself with poking fun at the oddly scared Chinese girl.

"Not fond of heights then, Shampoo?" The Japanese girl had only been on a short plane trip before, an overland flight for a holiday when the family was young, but she was managing to deal with the flight quite well. Not so much for Shampoo, who, Nabiki was fairly sure, was digging grooves into the armrests of the seat with her fingers. A growl was the only response from the purple-haired girl, who was staring straight ahead into the headrest in front of her, clearly trying not to look out the windows on either side of the passenger bay.

The Japanese girl smiled as she turned aside. She'd never liked Shampoo, her bluntness annoyed Nabiki, as well as the way she'd decided that because Ranma had beaten her up they were now married. Still, Nabiki had to bear in mind that they wouldn't be in the sky forever, and Cologne's price was still to be paid. Admittedly, had Nabiki thought about it she would have realised that she needed to take back-up, and the girl currently shaking in fear was probably the most powerful martial artist in Nerima who would have been willing to come with her.

Nabiki sighed, and settled back into the seat. Four more hours on a cramped commercial airliner and they'd be there. At least Shampoo's English was better than her Japanese, Nabiki thought. She turned away from the girl at her side and looked at Cologne, who was perched on a seat next to a mother and son. The son had taken one look at the elder, decided she was clearly a zombie come to eat his soul and stayed silent and still ever since take-off. Cologne, for her part, had merely smiled at the boy's mother and proceeded to read a magazine about popular foods in America.

Nabiki cleared her throat, and Cologne looked up from her magazine to meet the girls eyes with a questioning look.

"How difficult is it going to be, Elder?" Nabiki asked her question as politely and vaguely as she could. She didn't want people thinking she was mad, after all. Cologne folded the magazine she was reading, and seemed to think to herself for a moment before responding.

"It depends, child, on the flexibility of your mind. I think you will have little problem getting there. Getting back, however, relies on you teaching both son-in-law and Ryoga the same trick. It is lucky Shampoo already knows it, for I feel they may need much teaching."

Nabiki nodded in response, silently agreeing with the Chinese woman. She thought back to Nerima, hoping both it and the Dojo would still be standing when they returned. _I think I've set it all up right_, Nabiki thought worriedly. The accounts are set up so the father and Mr Saotome can't drink all the money away, Happosai is off for the Miss Europe competition, and most of the other meandering martial artists were impossible to predict.

She still wasn't sure why she was going, she just knew that she had to. One way or the other, Ranma Saotome was coming back to Nerima.


	4. Chapter 4

AN: Quite enjoying this whole writing schtick. Hope you're all enjoying reading what I'm doing!

* * *

_**Ryoga, Tristainian Academy of Magic, Halkeginia.**_

The day had faded into night, and Ryoga was sat outside looking up at the sky as it darkened. When Louise left he had decided to leave the scary girl to her own devices and stay outside in the sunlight. After all, the servants seemed quite happy to keep bringing him food and tea, and he wasn't going to argue with that. It also gave him some time to think about what had happened over the last day.

A spar, a kiss, another, much less satisfying, spar and a bond with short, angry, explosive-magic wielding girl. Ryoga shook his head to think of it. And she expected him to somehow help her with her magic, as if he knew anything more than how to badly read the instructions on magical artefacts. Still, he'd given it some thought, if just to pass the time between the servants bringing out another tray of food.

He could try to teach her martial arts, and teach her to control her ki that way. Then again, both he and Ranma had to train for years before they could do much more than bodily reinforcement, and they had started a lot younger. So that was out. They would have to find another way.

Ryoga continued to think it over as the moon and stars shone above his head, and he idly studied them, trying to place the familiar constellations onto the glimmering darkness stretching out above him. If he couldn't teach her martial arts then he'd have to somehow teach her magic, without knowing any himself, and that seemed like a recipe for disaster.

_Maybe meditation will be good_, Ryoga thought, his eyes tracking through the sky above him. Something felt wrong as he stared at the sky, a nagging sensation that something wasn't right as he stared at the moonrise on the horizon. His eyes slid up to the moon above him, and then back down to the moon on the horizon. Then up, then down. His eyebrows furrowed, and he picked up the glass he'd been drinking from, sniffing it cautiously. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Ryoga blinked up at the sky again. Two moons. _This isn't going to end well_, thought the lost boy, now more lost than he had ever been before. _This isn't going to end well at all._

* * *

Quite a few more drinks later, and Ryoga was a lot happier about the presence of two moons in the sky. He'd decided he should probably go to bed when the servants stopped appearing, and was now stumbling around the castle trying to find a suitable place to sleep. He frowned up at the symbols carved onto the door he was stood in front of, wobbling slightly as the alcohol took it's toll out of his balance.

He decided that he couldn't face another set of corridors, having avoided every set of stairs he'd seen, and that whatever was behind this door would do. Ryoga tried the handle and felt some resistance before it gave way with a metallic snap, the door swinging open in front of him. The blackness beyond loomed before him, and he staggered into the room, caught his shin on something and fell into what felt like a bed of straw. _This'll do,_ he thought as the drink finally dragged him into unconsciousness.

* * *

A combination of things drew Ryoga from his sleep. There was sunlight streaming through a window onto his face, a length of straw tickling his nose and an ominous growling noise coming from above him. Ryoga opened his eyes slowly, his body struggling against the after effects of the alcohol, and saw a fuzzy face surrounded by pink hair above him. This appeared to be the source of the growling noise, and Ryoga, even as hung over and sleepy as he was, knew what was coming.

"Stupid familiar!" The voice shrieked in an armour piercing pitch, and the words were quickly followed by an explosion, throwing Ryoga from his impromptu bed and into the wall. The events of last night staggered through a parade of recollection, and Ryoga attempted to pull himself into some form of readiness for what would surely be a bad day. After being woken like that it could hardly be anything else, thought Ryoga sadly.

"You were not there for me to give proper instruction last night, you did not wake me as a familiar should, you..." Ryoga tuned out the voice of his unwanted, and apparently very unhappy, master, rolling his head around to work the kinks out of his neck, and looked around idly as Louise's rant increased in both volume and pitch.

He found himself to be in the same room as where he had woken up the previous day. It was clearly Louise's room, and Ryoga considered that he was apparently several floors up with no memory of climbing stairs.

Ryoga let the thoughts go with a shrug as Louise wound down – he was getting used to never knowing where he was on any given day, there was no reason to worry about it now. The pink-haired girl had stopped ranting, and was now staring at him with an expectant look on his face. The ki-bond echoed the same feeling to him, and Ryoga shrugged once before gingerly trying a response.

"Sorry."

The girl looked as though she was going to start up again, but drew herself up with a deep breath.

"Very well. Follow me." The arctic tone of her voice could have chilled a desert, and she turned on her heel to walk out of the door. Ryoga followed her, trying not to wander off, as she led him down several flights of stairs, finally stopping outside a heavy wooden door.

"They don't normally allow familiars into lessons, but as you so kindly offered to help me with my magic yesterday I'm taking you in anyway." The short girl turned to him as she spoke, her tone measurably warmer than it had been. Ryoga remembered the conversation yesterday entirely differently, but he had learned _something_ from watching Saotome stuff his foot in his mouth, and kept quiet. After all, while the explosions didn't exactly hurt, they weren't fun.

She eyed him carefully, before nodding and walking into the classroom. Ryoga dutifully trailed her in, evaluating the room and the people within it instinctively as he followed her to a set of benches at the rear of the room.

* * *

The teacher seemed to be new to all the students, starting by introducing himself as 'Marcus of the Gale', and immediately diving into a torrent of words, of which Ryoga comprehended most, but understood very little. He let his gaze drift around the semi-circular room, noting that most of the people sitting there seemed just as lost as him, adrift on a sea of polysyllabic words. A few people were still keeping up, Ryoga's new master among them.

This confused Ryoga slightly – from his experience while book learning wasn't necessary to being an incompetent user of magic, having it tended to mean you had the skills as well. Ryoga shifted on the bench, casting his gaze back over the room and ignoring the frantic note-taking happening on Louise's desk. The flow of words from the front showed no sign of slowing, and some of the students had given up even the pretence of listening.

The red-headed girl from yesterday was sat next to a short blue-haired girl reading a book, and seemed to be happily talking to the smaller girl, undaunted by the lack of any measurable response that Ryoga could see. The blonde fop from yesterday was lounging on a seat a few rows away, and seemed to have overcome the distress Ryoga had caused him as he was happily chatting up some new girl.

There was a sudden silence as the teacher's torrent of words finally came to a halt, with only the scratching of Louise's pen to dull the emptiness. The enthusiastic man stood expectantly at the front of the room, clearly waiting for a response to the end of his monologue.

He wasn't going to get one, Ryoga knew as he stared at the thin man as his expression started to become annoyed at the lack of response. Louise's pen finally came to a halt, and Ryoga glanced at her to see her looking round nervously at her classmates. Suddenly, the man gave a huff, and pointed at Louise, prompting her shoulders to tighten as the class followed the finger to stare at her.

"You were writing things down, were you not?" Marcus had apparently become tired of waiting for a response which was unlikely to come, and decided to seek out an answer. Louise nodded hesitantly, placing her pen back on her desk.

"Well, what is your answer? Which element is the most powerful?" The repetition of the question seemed to make the students relax, and the tension seemed to drain out of the room. There was a brief pause, as Louise marshalled her thoughts, however she was interrupted with a shout from one of the lower rows.

"Bah, it's not like the _Zero _would know anything about magic – it's not like explosions are an element!" The comment drew laughs from the hall, and the student carried on. "Besides, it's Earth, _obviously!_"

This was sufficient to start the entire room talking, each mage extolling the virtues of their own element to any who would listen, and loudly demeaning every other element to any who would listen. Ryoga sat there for a moment, noting the impotent rage on Louise's face and the same feeling tingling over their link. He'd have to get rid of the bond somehow, but right now his own anger was being tapped into, and Ryoga decided to let some of it out.

The teacher was shouting at the class, trying to settle the unforeseen argument down, when Ryoga stood, and briefly flexed his arms. Louise started turning to look at him, possibly even feeling a little of his intent through their link, when he lifted the long desk in front of them, and unceremoniously dropped it again.

He didn't lift it very far, a couple of inches at most, however the desk was large enough for ten people to sit at and made of thick, heavy wood. The crash it made when it landed was more than enough to silence the arguing adolescents, who all broke off to stare at the heavily built boy in shock.

"I think he was asking Louise, don't you?" Ryoga was somewhat pleased with the result of his action, with most of the class sitting down in stunned silence. The one boy who looked like me might argue was pulled down by Guiche, who whispered in his ear at length while waving his index finger.

Having made his point, Ryoga sat back down, noting that the link had stopped feeling angry. He nodded to Louise, and settled down to worry about his emotions being twisted quite so easily by the bond. The teacher seemed to be just as stunned as the students, though he dealt with it quicker, snapping out of it enough to gesture at the pink-haired girl to continue.

* * *

Having Ryoga interrupt the shouting match on her behalf seemed to have given Louise some courage, however she still cleared her throat self-consciously before answering.

"Well... most of the elements have counters." She stopped and ran her tongue across her lips nervously before continuing with more confidence. "So, the only one without that is the void. But no-one has that element. So none of them are more powerful by themselves, it's what you do with them."

Ryoga shrugged mentally as he heard the explanation. After all, his breaking point training was earth, and had been cancelled out by Ranma's adaptation of chestnuts roasting on an open fire, which was fire. The teacher seemed to be happy with the response, grinning at the girl as she finished her response.

"Exactly!" He started to pace at the front of the room as he expanded on Louise's answer. "I am a wind mage, so logically I should be weak to earth spells, as they should not be susceptible to being blown away. However!" He flourished his arm as he spoke, and a stone paving slab glided gently from the floor onto the front bench.

Marcus waited till the block had settled onto the table, then gestured at it as he continued.

"If you will observe the block, you will see that it is a full foot in width. A gale, if you'll pardon the pun, could batter at it for years and not get anywhere. But if I do _this_..."

He trailed away, then chopped his hand in a diagonal sweep towards the block. A thin wave of silver slid out from his hand, moving almost too quickly for even Ryoga to catch it's movement. The block trembled as the thin line of light hit it, then lay still. The teacher took a step towards it, then nudged it with his index finger. The top half of the block slid away, landing on the stone floor with a sizeable slam.

"You see?"

The class seemed to be as stunned as they had been when Ryoga had dropped the desk, and the teacher smiled as he ran his gaze over the room. Ryoga himself was more than interested – he'd heard that Ranma had a similar technique, though he never used it in their spars. He'd claimed it was sealed for a reason, and Ryoga had to admit, if only in his head, that even his toughened constitution might have issues with an attack like that.

Letting the demonstration sink in, the teacher moved around to the front of his desk, and perched himself on it. He watched the students as they came out from their awestruck silence, and then spoke up again.

"Now then, who isn't already a wind mage, and would like to learn a wind spell? It won't be as effective as that one, mind you!"

Most of the class sat up at this as learning new spells, while difficult, was always good. Marcus swept the room with his gaze, before settling back on Louise, who was currently deciding whether or not to be angry with Ryoga for bringing her back to the spotlight.

"Ah, I think the person who gave the answer should get the first go. It was Louise, wasn't it?" Louise nodded, and got up, her face forming into a cast of determination. The air in the room had become thick with tension again, and a lot of the students were opening their mouths as if to complain, before looking nervously at Ryoga and shutting them again.

As Louise neared the desk one of the students, Ryoga noted absently that it was Kirche, finally found the nerve to speak up.

"Ah, professor... you might wish to choose someone else. She's known as the Zero for a reason, after all..."

The teacher waved aside the red-headed girls complaints, and beckoned Louise closer. Ryoga leaned forward, intent on watching what happened. After all, she said her magic didn't work, she could blow him up at will, and she had decided that he would fix this. Therefore in the interests of not being blown up at random intervals till they got rid of the link, Ryoga would pay attention.

His actions seemed to mark him as the odd one out, as every other student in the room was trying to get as far away from the front of the room as possible. One boy at the back had opened a window, and was in the process of smuggling himself out. Ryoga ignored them. After all, he'd been at the centre of one of Louise's detonations, he'd be fine.

As Ryoga looked back at the front of the room, he noted that Louise's expression was a lot more determined than he'd seen before. He settled in to watch, peering at the auras of both teacher and student, and saw Louise mirror the actions shown to her by Marcus perfectly.

* * *

"Well." Ryoga's voice was still a bit shaky, even after several hours, however the awe came through without any problem. "That was the biggest explosion I've seen since the whole business with Saffron. And he was a demi-god!"

Louise was sat on a bench next to the shell-shocked lost boy, her shoulders slumped as they stared at the hole in the side of the building. Ordinarily Ryoga's unfiltered words would have sparked rage in the small girl, however the damage she had inflicted was muting her feelings somewhat.

Classes had been cancelled for the day while builders and mages were brought in to assess if the destruction Louise had caused could affect the whole building. The water mages called to look at Marcus the Gale had delivered their report after three hours of emergency stabilisation, saying he was likely to survive, even if it was unlikely that he would ever use his left arm again.

The remainder of the students had been far enough away from ground zero to escape harm, though most of them now refused to be in a room with Louise when she was holding her wand. The two of them had moved outside after the evening meal, Louise finding a bench where she could stare at the destruction she had wrought. _Still,_ mused Ryoga, _something good came out of this._ He cleared his throat, then nudged Louise when she failed to look at him.

Her eyes shifted over to him, her face settled into a withdrawn mask.

"I think I might know what your problem is." Ryoga's words didn't spark the girl's face to unfreeze, so he continued. "When I was watching Marcus do the spell, I could sort of see his aura shift with what he was doing, but not clearly. When _you_ did it, there was something else. It wasn't ki, but it felt... well, heavy."

Ryoga waited for a response, and the young girl just turned back to the hole in the wall, her face still emotionless.

"What's the point?"

Ryoga winced at the tone. If she had any control over her ki she'd be getting toward a perfect _shi shi hokodan_ at this point.

"They're going to send me home. Can't even manage a basic wind spell, destroyed a classroom even trying to make one work. Mother's going to _kill_ me."

They'd sat there for long enough now that the night had drawn in, the only light provided through the windows of the building, with some shining through the new hole in the wall Louise had created. Ryoga wasn't sure what to do at this point - depression powered his stronger attacks, so he'd never put any stock in finding ways to stop being upset.

"Ah... It'll be okay?" Ryoga tried, putting his hand gingerly on her shoulder. "I'm sure blowing things up isn't _that_ uncommon..." His attempts at reassuring her seemed to reach a roadblock, as she snapped her head around to glare at him and he hastily withdrew his hand.

"Uncommon? Uncommon!?" Louise's voice had dropped into the terrifying register again, and Ryoga shifted away as the pressure he'd felt yesterday pushed back down on him. The pink-haired girl had her wand out again, her knuckles white around the handle as she glared at him. "Not one mention, in any of the books I've read, of anybody making things explode like I do. Not one mention."

Both of them were standing now, Ryoga backing away from Louise's angry advance. He was contemplating the outright theft of Ranma's idiotic "Final Technique" when her eyes flicked to something both above and behind him, and she paused with her face still locked in anger.

"And what the _hell_ is _that!?_"

Ryoga spun, wondering if this was some new trick to catch him with an explosion, and his eyes widened as he looked up. And up. And then up some more. Finally he saw a human figure, perched at the shoulder of a six storey golem.

"Huh." Ryoga was hard pressed to form any more coherent thought, somewhat shaken by the being of rock and stone which would have dwarfed even Pantyhose Taro in his cursed form. Louise seemed less fazed by the sudden appearance of the ridiculously tall construct, and appeared at his side, shouting up toward the figure riding it.

"Who are you?!"

At this distance Ryoga would have been hard pressed to tell if it was a boy or a girl, even if he didn't normally have problems telling, however the voice which floated back down to them was clearly feminine.

"Oh, I didn't see you there. Having a lover's stroll, hmm?" There was an edge of laughter in the voice, and the golem paused to allow the rider to lean over to look at them.

Louise seemed to take the accusation badly, and drew herself up to respond. However, the rider didn't give her the opportunity, letting the golem carry on walking as she shouted down to the duo.

"Doesn't matter to me, but I have places to be, things to steal. You can tell your grandchildren you were lucky enough to speak to Fouquet of the Crumbling Dirt – Master Thief!"

Both Ryoga and Louise watched the golem move away, Ryoga still shocked at how quietly it was moving for something so impossibly large. As it closed on the main Academy tower, Louise snapped out of her daze and turned to Ryoga.

"She's trying to steal from the Academy, we have to stop her!"

Ryoga kept watching the golem as it walked away, then rolled his shoulders to loosen the joints. The Valkyrie golems that Guiche had summoned hadn't been a patch on this, he thought with a tinge of expectation. He nodded in response to Louise, his gaze still fixed on the golem, seeking out it's breaking points. Ryoga doubted it would be quite that easy, but it would make a nice intro to the fight.

Ryoga's face broke out into a grin, and he set off into a run toward the golem, which had paused outside the main building in preparation for Fouquet's next move. As he moved off he shouted back to Louise.

"Keep up, this is gonna be _great_!"

* * *

_**Ranma, Pandemonium Fortress, Hell.**_

"How curious..."

The old man was really starting to annoy Ranma now. He'd been spouting similar words ever since he'd seen the young martial artist, and seemed happy to go on long winding tangents about the situation at the slightest provocation. All Ranma really wanted was to get back to Nerima. He was even starting to miss Akane's cooking.

The other figure had kept quiet, but he still ranked as something entirely weird in Ranma's books. Then again, if Ranma thought about it he would have decided that this Tyrael was something weird in anyone's books. For starters, he had wings. And not wings of flesh or feathers, these were wings of ethereal light, emanating out from the figure's shoulder blades and stretching out a long way from Tyrael's body.

He was wearing golden armour, engraved with symbols, and heavy metal shoulder plates that flared upwards in imitation of his wings. His face was obscured, held in deep shadow by the white hood which covered his head. His aura was odd as well. Ranma's was mostly confidence, however other emotions spilled in as and when he felt them. It was part of being human, after all, but this Tyrael seemed to have only a single thing running throughout his being. Ranma couldn't define it, but it seemed to be _right_, or more precisely, telling right from wrong.

And then there was the last thing. Even with everything else, this was what took Ranma's breath away. Tyrael was floating. Not flying, like a bird, or even like Herb of the Musk, but truly floating, hanging motionless in the air.

Beside him, the old man was simply that – an old man. He wore a dark robe, and carried an old wooden staff, which he leant on for support. He was bald, though his beard was long and white, and his face was wrinkled with age. He called himself Deckard Cain, and the woman Ranma had come in with had shown great respect for him. He seemed to have no great power of his own to Ranma's eyes, but the martial artist had learnt that power could be, and had been, beaten by skill and knowledge. He was living proof of it, after all – Saffron had wielded power greater than anything the Saotome heir could command, and Ranma had still won the fight.

"So, what are we gonna do?" Ranma had become impatient with the meaningless comments being thrown his way, and decided to speak up.

"**You say you did not willingly arrive here, mortal?**" Tyrael's voice echoed with itself, his deep tones ringing into the world.

"No, I didn't. I'd blame Ryoga, but I doubt he's _actually_ been to Hell." Ranma's response was terse. Though he didn't like to show it, him and Ryoga had been getting along recently. If the pig-boy was stuck somewhere in Hell he might be in real trouble.

Cain stroked his beard as he considered the dark-haired boy's response.

"Perhaps with Diablo's return to Hell, the barriers between worlds are weakening? Could that be the case, Tyrael?"

"**No. The worldstone yet stands at Mount Arreat – I would have felt it's fall. I believe this may not be the work of the Lords of Hell. Still, they are entwined in this, for I cannot help while Diablo still walks Hell.**"

Ranma shook his head in resignation. Things were never simple, he reflected. There was always something that had to be done before anyone could help him.

The woman he had come in with stepped forward, gaining the attention of both Cain and Tyrael as she did.

"Then our goals align." She turned to Ranma with a grim smile. "I and my companions seek to kill Diablo, and end the Lord of Terror's reign over Hell. If you were capable of surviving the Plains of Despair, unarmed and unarmoured, then we would welcome you alongside us, brother." She reached her arm out to him, awaiting his response.

Ranma considered his options for a moment, then decided to roll with it. After all, if they fought these things they might have some tricks he could use, and it wasn't as if sitting here was going to get him home any faster. He reached out his hand, and clasped it around her forearm as the woman did the same to him.

"**Then it is decided. Ranma Saotome, you shall join with our champions to battle Diablo, the Lord of Terror.**" With this said, Tyrael returned to silence, his armoured form barely moving. Deckard Cain turned to the pair, and nodded at Ranma.

"You should get some weapons, and armour. The fiends of Hell do not treat flesh well. I will examine the Horadric archives, and see if I may find anything that will assist Tyrael in sending you home again." Cain turned away, and moved towards a section of the fortress, leaning heavily on his staff as he walked.

The dark-haired martial artist turned to the only person left as she sized him up, then furrowed his brow.

"I don't think you've actually told me your name yet?"

"My name is Meldea. Well met, brother." She gestured towards the front of the keep, and they started walking. "There are three others that fight alongside me. They will be in the armoury, so we can outfit you at the same time as we introduce you."


	5. Chapter 5

_**Ryoga, Tristainian Academy of Magic, Halkeginia**_

The golem's strides were long, and even with Ryoga running towards it at a decent pace it reached the Academy tower long before he reached it. Louise had fallen behind, unable to keep up with Ryoga, but he thought it might be better that way – after all, the breaking point technique had a tendency to throw shards of rock and stone everywhere when used.

The woman standing on top of the golem had spread her arms, and looked to be making gestures with both hands towards the wall of the tower. The night was still quiet, with no-one except Ryoga and Louise seeming to notice the huge golem standing in the middle of the Academy. Ryoga would have thought more about this, however he finally reached the golem, and flung himself up to it's leg, finger seeking out a breaking point on it's rocky hide.

"_Bakusai Tenketsu!_" Ryoga's shout caused a pause in Fouquet's casting, causing her to look down to the side of the golem as he struck. Ryoga's finger connected cleanly with his target, and he could feel the golem start to shatter as the rest of his body impacted on it's leg. He tensed against the surface, ready to let the exploding stone throw him back to the ground, only to be left hanging to the side of the unexploded golem as the spike of ki he'd forced into the stone faded away as the breaking point seemed to shift.

Ryoga hung there for a moment more, staring at the stone leg, before being knocked from his perch by a hand the size of a car. The unexpected impact curled Ryoga through the air, hurtling towards the wall of one of the buildings surrounding the tower. He had a moment to think about the failure of his technique before plowing straight into, and through, the outer wall and two inner walls before skidding along a floor and over a balcony.

Dropping two storeys wouldn't normally inconvenience the lost boy too much, but the impacts of the hand and walls temporarily stunned him, even with his hardened constitution and he simply allowed himself to lie on the ground for a moment.

He lay there in a daze, the noise of crumbling stone a light backdrop to the silence of the empty building. Suddenly, a voice rang out through the holes he'd carved into the building.

"Stop you thief!" Louise's voice rang out into the courtyard, distracting Fouquet from her renewed chanting.

"Run along, little girl." Fouquets voice rang down with a superior tone. "Your boyfriend's little earth technique was clever, if far too slow to affect my masterpiece. Anything you can pull out will fail just as badly!"

_Louise won't take that well_, thought Ryoga muzzily, his wits slowly coming back to him as he rolled over in preparation for getting up. True to his short experience with the girl, the reminder of her failures didn't go well.

"I am not a _failure!_" Louise's voice reverberated with anger again, and Ryoga's ki sense flared again with the heaviness she'd caused the evening before. Ryoga shook his head, attempting to clear the disorientation as he staggered upright. He glanced around, his head still spinning slightly, and groaned in panic. He didn't even slightly recognise this place, and he had no idea how to get out, let along back to Louise and the ridiculously large golem.

Fouquet was responding to Louise, but Ryoga tuned it out in favour of trying to decide how to get out. He pulled a wooden door open, finding it led to a broom closet, then span back around and tried another, to similar effect. _How many brooms does one place need?_ Ryoga's thoughts were starting to lock into panic, and he heard Louise's voice raising in a chant for a spell.

Ryoga ran down a corridor leading away from his impromptu landing spot, hoping he would find some way of getting back to the fight, tearing the nearest door off it's hinges when it's lock resisted his pull, and found himself in a classroom. Ryoga growled in frustration and started to turn back around when the heavy feeling doubled and he heard Louise's voice raised in a final shout.

"FIREBALL!"

The explosion which followed was earsplitting, and Ryoga paused, trying to hear what the reaction to it from where he stood.

"Thanks for that." Fouquet's voice rang out again, and Ryoga snarled. Apparently Louise wasn't that good a shot.

"But I doubt letting you get a second shot will end that well. So I think I'd best be rid of you, little girl."

The intent in the words filled Ryoga with dread, and he looked around frantically, trying to find the path to Louise before Fouquet carried through with whatever her threat was. He looked desperately with his ki sense, trying to find the root of the heavy power that Louise wielded without success. Then, even as he began to panic again, he spotted the ki-bond stretching from him to Louise.

The thin link of ki lanced off through a wall, and Ryoga immediately followed it, smashing through the wall it led into and careening into the courtyard to see the golem standing above Louise's kneeling form. It began to raise it's foot, and Ryoga realised that he couldn't get there in time to stop it.

Thoughts flashed through his head in moments. He'd got lost here, tied to a girl he'd never met, been blown up, and now was about to watch someone die. Ryoga found his hands cupping instinctively, and he drew his emotions into his ki, projecting them into a green ball held in his hands.

The figure of the golem paused at the apex of it's stomp, and Ryoga pushed the ball forward, aiming for the leg as it began to move. He noted the runes glowing like a lamp on his left hand, hoping they would help rather than hurt the technique.

"_Shi shi hokodan!_" The ball of ki took most of the emotion with it, and even as it left Ryoga started to run forward toward Louise. The ball struck the golem and detonated, knocking the plummeting leg aside and forcing it to miss the recovering girl on the floor. Fouquet shouted in anger, and the golem started to raise the leg for a second attempt.

Ryoga wasn't inclined to give it the opportunity, and dashed up to Louise, grabbing her from the floor into his arms and jumping away as fast as he could. The golem's foot came down with another crash, missing the speeding martial artist cleanly as he fled into the shadow of a building. Ryoga paused and looked back, happy to see that Fouquet had decided against the chase. With his breaking point failing he'd have to think up something on the fly, and that would make protecting Louise much trickier.

The Academy hadn't been idle either, as the explosion Louise had caused could have woken the dead. There were students and teachers alike rushing out of their sleeping buildings and pulling on clothes as they did. Fouquet clearly decided that the odds were starting to go against her, and the golem crunched over to a hole carved into the tower. She dropped into the hole for a moment, and then jumped back out, clutching a long package as she scaled back to the shoulder of her golem.

The golem itself wasn't still either, throwing itself into a run away from the damaged Academy as soon as it's creator was back aboard. A dragon plummeted from the sky in front of Ryoga's astonished eyes, the rider clearly casting a spell as ice bloomed on the golems shoulder. Still, it seemed to have as much effect as Ryoga's first technique and the golem extended a massive arm to swat the flying lizard from the sky. The dragon dodged gracefully, and conceded the pursuit as the golem extended into a full run, disappearing into the distance even as Ryoga watched.

A shuffling in his arms reminded him that he was still holding Louise, and he let her down gently. They stood watching the hole in the top of the Academy tower, and Ryoga turned to her with a smirk creeping onto his lips.

"That hole was you wasn't it?" The lost boy said as she turned a gaze that wavered between anger and worry onto him. "We need to work on your aim."

* * *

They'd retired back to Louise's room after being told they would need to talk to the headmaster in the morning. Ryoga had been somewhat reluctant to enter upon being told it was Louise's room, but did as he was told when her wand appeared in her hand again. He'd been pointed to a straw bed in the corner and considered arguing, but given it up as a bad job when Louise simply collapsed onto her bed, unconscious even before she hit the sheets.

The martial artist stared at her unmoving form long enough to deduce that she was still alive, then gently pushed her into the middle of the bed. That done, he settled onto the straw and began to consider what just happened. He wasn't as adept as Ranma for countering techniques, but he'd been a martial artist for long enough to be able to think his way round a problem.

_Too slow_. The thief had called the Breaking Point technique slow, and he'd felt the lines of ki shift within the construct after he'd struck with his attack. Ryoga grimaced, as he wasn't sure how to modify the technique to make it work faster, or even if that was possible. He moved on for now, aware that simply sitting and thinking wouldn't get him anywhere.

Ryoga's thoughts drifted to the other thing he'd learnt from today. The bond he shared with Louise could act as a kind of compass, giving him a reference point. It was a way out of the direction curse his family had laboured under, a way to finally not lose his way at any given moment.

Ryoga slumped even as he thought about it. The only thing he would need to do would be not break the bond, stay linked to a girl he'd never met and be trapped forever on a world that wasn't earth. With no Akari, no Akane... even no Ranma. Ryoga felt his familiar depression come back, and he shook his head slowly. Something to consider in the morning, he decided, and lay down to sleep.

* * *

The next morning brought more than a few stares to the odd pair as they sat eating in the main food hall of the Academy. Given that everyone had seen the giant golem, and people had heard that Louise had been summoned to see the headmaster, the rumour mill was working at full pace. Stories from Louise having summoned the golem to Louise cowardly letting the thief in and everything in between had run the student body.

Ryoga was taking the staring fairly well, throwing dirty glares at some of the students muttering the more insulting rumours. Louise was not taking it quite so well, ducking her head when she heard even the more praiseworthy rumours. The muttering ended when one of the teachers strode up to the pair, inviting Louise to follow her to the headmasters office.

As she stood she gestured for Ryoga to follow and he fell in at her shoulder, casting his gaze around the hall as he walked. He noted another teacher leading a blue-haired girl in the same direction as Louise, wondering why she looked familiar.

As they moved through the courtyard, Ryoga's memory was swiftly jogged by the sight of a dragon joining their group. He glanced from the girl to the giant reptile, and decided she must have been the dragon rider who had attacked the golem as they left. This set his paranoia off regarding the meeting they were being led to, as the rider hadn't spoken to the thief, only attacked her.

Ryoga kept his suspicions to himself as they walked into the headmaster's office, waiting behind Louise as they waited to be told why they were there. Ryoga used the time to look around the office, though most of his view was blocked by teachers. They wore similar clothes to Marcus the Gale, long robes in four deep colours, while the headmaster wore a robe of dark grey.

The room itself was quite well furnished, showing – in Ryoga's estimation – wealth without opulence. He'd found himself lost in more than a few places, and this seemed to be in the upper bracket for taste. The teachers seemed to be the same, most of them clearly showing signs of an easy life, though one or two seemed to keep in shape.

The room grew silent as a few last stragglers moved to fill gaps in the room, and once it had the headmaster spoke.

"We have determined which object the thief Fouquet stole. She has made off with the Staff of Destruction, a powerful and unique artefact."

The teachers burst into whispers at this, and the headmasters mouth twisted into a frown as they ceased to pay attention to him. Ryoga saw his hand move, his fingers clicking together, but was honestly surprised when they sounded like a gun going off by his ear. The sound shocked the group into silence, and the headmaster smiled when they returned his attention to him again.

"Now, as the thief stole this one item only it is clear she wishes to use it. Therefore, she shall stay near to the Academy, as there are no instructions outside of these buildings." The headmasters words seemed to worry the teachers, though they refrained from bursting into conversation as they had before.

The headmaster continued, resting his elbows on his desk and peering at the group over steepled fingers.

"Now, as the princess will be arriving in a few short weeks to oversee the Evaluation Ceremony, we will need to apprehend Fouquet before she attacks again. After all, the sheer damage she has caused to the buildings will take all of our efforts to repair as it is!"

Ryoga shuffled guiltily at this, dropping his gaze to the floor. He knew that the vast majority of the damage had been caused by either him or Louise, and had no wish for this to be outed in front of the authority of the school.

Staring down brought him to a confusing sight, however, as he saw a mouse scampering across the floor, pausing at the feet of several different people. As the mouse moved closer he noticed that it was stopping under the women, and seemed to be staring upwards each time. It took three more stops for him to realise the reason, at which point Ryoga decided it was clearly a fellow Jusenkyo sufferer, and a perverted one at that.

Having decided this, he noticed that it was getting dangerously close to Louise, and Ryoga realised he should put a stop to this. The mouse scuttled past his feet on it's quest, and then paused suddenly as it felt Ryoga's foot resting on top of it. The mouse sat there for a moment, then turned it's unrestrained head upwards to look at Ryoga, who shook his head at it. The mouse paused a moment longer, then made an oddly human nod, and Ryoga released it.

The mouse promptly moved back the way it came, skirting around the edges of the room, and Ryoga allowed himself to pay attention to what the headmaster was saying again. Unfortunately he came in at the end of a sentence, and the headmaster had clearly asked a question. Ryoga imagined it hadn't been aimed at him anyway, but the sense of determination echoing over the bond caused him to worry a little.

"I and my familiar will capture this thief, headmaster." Louise's voice seemed very loud to Ryoga, who felt a mixture of anticipation and worry. A second round with the giant golem would be a good fight, but he still wasn't sure what technique he could use to affect it. Maybe he'd have to start branching out again.

The room seemed to relax with the pronouncement, reinforcing Ryoga's evaluation of most of the teachers having an easy life. There were some flurries of movement as people turned their heads to stare at Louise, the main one coming from the short, odlly blue-haired, girl standing next to Louise. She raised her wand, and when the headmaster looked at her she said clearly,

"Flying." The word seemed to be all the headmaster needed to understand her meaning, and he nodded with a look of comprehension.

"Ah yes, Miss Tabitha's familiar will be most useful in searching for the golem, along with her having already attained the rank of Chevalier. However, I feel it best that a member of staff go along as well, in order to ensure the safety of our students." The headmaster's instruction raised the tension in the room again, none of the teachers wishing to go on the hunt for a six storey golem.

Suddenly the silence was broken with a stamp, and a lady who had been stood next to to the headmasters desk spoke up.

"I shall go with them. I have some skill in tracking, so I should be able to help find the thief." The woman appeared to have stamped to emphasise her point, however Ryoga had still been keeping his gaze on the floor, and noticed a shell-shocked mouse scurrying away from her shoes. The martial artist grinned at the destabilised mouse as it fled, and almost missed the woman's introduction.

"Indeed, this seems to be a good mix. Students, this is my secretary, Miss Longueville. The three of you should have no trouble capturing this wayward thief!" The headmaster seemed to consider the issue settled at this point, and gestured for the group in his office to leave.

As they did, Ryoga thought again as to what he could do to take out the golem. Too slow, the thief had said. Well, he'd think of something. _Maybe if Louise could correct her aim_, he mused.

* * *

_**Ranma, Pandemonium Fortress. Hell.**_

Ranma was feeling a little off balance as he walked into the armoury beside Meldea, but what he saw inside settled him back into his comfort zone. A woman dressed in leather armour, reinforced with metal in strategic locations, was dancing around a one-armed man swinging a battleaxe with wild abandon. Ranma saw Meldea shake her head out of the corner of his eye before settling in to watch the pair as they sparred.

The man was all power but he moved with experience, his swings seeming less and less manic as Ranma watched. There was a pattern, but it was missing parts, strikes that should have been followed up were left alone. Every time this happened the woman slid into the man's guard and dealt him a harsh strike to his unguarded side, drawing Ranma's eyes over to her.

Her actions were both easier and harder for Ranma to follow, easier as they were similar to the Art that Ranma practiced, and harder as he was forced to stamp down on the instinctive worry a trained female martial artist caused in him. After all, back in Nerima the usual reason for a new martial artist was either to challenge him or marry him, depending on the gender of the newcomer. _Still,_ Ranma thought, _the old panda can't possibly have been to Hell._

The spar was winding down as the newcomers to the armoury watched, and as the combatants stepped away from each other a third man stepped from the shadows near a wall to give an interested look at the man stood beside Meldea.

The one-armed man was the first to speak, his voice a deep rumble which fit his rough exterior perfectly.

"Finally given in and pulled in a mortal to satisfy your... _needs_, Meldea?"

The armoured woman replied with a blank stare, and the man let a smirk cross his features as he returned her gaze silently. The pause was filled by the woman who had been fighting, who cocked her head at Ranma as she spoke quietly.

"Karn's attempt to rile the Paladin aside, the question does bear answering. Who are you, boy?"

Ranma glanced at Meldea before he answered, wondering if she would take over, however he found her still meeting Karn's gaze levelly and paying no attention to him. With the only person he knew distracted, he answered as best he could.

"Er. Hi..." His response trailed off a little when the second man came to stand behind the woman, trailing what appeared to be a being made entirely of flame. He tore his gaze away from the firey creature, moving it back to the expectant eyes of his questioner and continued gamely.

"I'm Ranma Saotome, I got... well, lost. And turns out that Tyrael guy can only send me home when this Diablo you lot are chasing is gone. I ain't gonna just stand around being saved, so I'm gonna help you guys."

Both the woman and the man looked far too amused at the first part of his explanation for Ranma's liking, and his face twisted into a grimace when the man leaned forward with a grin on his face.

"You got lost, and ended up on the Plains of Despair? That takes a special kind of skill, indeed." His voice held a dark malice, and he started to chuckle until the woman elbowed him sharply, her strike finding it's way to an unarmoured spot on the man's abdomen and causing him to wince.

"Ignore Malik, he's been finding everything amusing since Karn lost his arm." The woman had been examining him while Ranma had been glaring at the laughing man, and she nodded slightly as she continued, "Tyrael must think you can help us then? What sort of fighting do you take to?"

Ranma nodded back at her, flexing his hands as he answered her question with a hint of pride.

"Hand to hand, martial arts."

Her eyes lit up a little with his answer, and Ranma's worry slid back into his mind, letting him guess what her next words would be.

"Really? Good, Karn's been terrible at sparring ever since he lost the arm. He can kill demons with the best of them, but all his skill was in fighting with two weapons. The name's Ashka - fancy a spar?" She had started to move towards the centre of the room even as she asked the question, and Ranma followed her lead.

"Sure, you looked pretty good when you were dodging the big guy's strikes." Ranma settled into his normal stance opposite her, noting how she was set up and trying to predict the hits based on what he'd seen of her before.

Even with him watching her closely Ranma still almost missed the attack, dodging her first strike at his head and parrying her follow-up blows with open handed slaps to throw her aim off. Ranma's mind was flitting through possibilities even as he retaliated, sweeping his leg round at floor level to throw off her next set of attacks.

She hopped nimbly over the kick, and Ranma could feel the ki flowing to her hands in preparation for her next attacks. Moving quickly he shifted round to her side, hammering in three strikes to her shoulder and bicep as the ki lit her hands up with a light glow for her rebuttal.

Her strikes had turned to rounded, swinging blows, designed to stop him parrying as he had earlier, and Ranma was forced to disengage, taking a hit to dodge the rest of the combination. The ki in the hand that struck him discharged, filtering into his aura, and Ranma backed up a little to try and sense what it was doing.

As he disengaged, he noted a smirk on Ashka's face, and then a shifting of her ki. She flickered out of sight for a moment, her ki replacing itself at his side, and he was forced to dodge a lightning fast kick with a inelegant lunge out of it's range. Ranma span back around, his eyes alight – the idea of a technique that allowed him to teleport sprouting ideas as fast as his mind could take them.

She was hardly idle, however, and she was back inside Ranma's comfort zone in an instant, swinging fists laden with the same ki as before. Ranma dodged and parried them, steering clear of the concentration of ki in the fists and forcing her strikes wider. With a yell he capitalised on one of the openings her wider swings caused, forcing his ki down his right arm and into his modified Amaguriken attack, striking with fifty punches in the blink of an eye.

The sheer force transferred by the hits knocked the woman back, though Ranma noted that she seemed otherwise unfazed by the strike.

"Nice shots." Ashka relaxed as she spoke, settling out of her stance. Ranma followed suit, noting that Meldea and Karn seemed to have ended their impromptu staring match, and Malik appeared to have lost interest in the fight.

"You should be able to fight alongside us, though you might need something with a bit more range, too." She looked Ranma over again, then gestured towards the armour-covered wall. "Lets get you something to stop your insides becoming your outsides, then I think we should be going. Can't let Diablo stew in his lair for too long, after all!"


End file.
